Sergeants flea drops Killed my cat Fluffy

I recently lost my cat Fluffy he was 7 years old and very healthy I also have a cat named Moe he is 3 years old

I bought the sergeants brand flea drops and applied them to both my cats on Sunday August 17th 2008.

About 3 am on August 19th I got up to use the bathroom and noticed my cat Moe laying on the floor something just didn’t seem right I picked him up and he was limp eyes dilated and drooling excessively (he had a seizure I just didnt know it yet),I checked over fluffy he seemed fine well about a half hour to an hour later I heard alot of noise and went to find my cat fluffy having a seizure it was pretty bad afterward I held him for about an hour once he seemed fine I decided to bath him and moe thinking it was the drops that caused the seizure after the bath I held him some more and then decided to put him down in a quiet area a few moments later he had another seizure this was about 7 am I called the vet and got him in right away he told me about the pestiside that is in these over the counter flea meds and confirmed that is what was wrong with my cats and he gave them both shots to help the seizures stop, 2 hours later Fluffy was just getting worse and the vet said he was dying so I chose to put him to sleep I held his paw and told him I loved him and that I was sorry this happened to him and then he was gone ……

Moe is going to be ok he is getting beter he is still at the vet but he will make it out of this alive thank god this did not claim the life of both my cats

I hope this helps you get these products taken off the shelf let me know what else I can do also ! I am in this fight for Fluffy and Moe so hopefully I can help prevent this from happening to someone elses pet

18 thoughts on “Sergeants flea drops Killed my cat Fluffy”

On August 24, 2008 – I purchased the Sergeants Gold Flea & Ticket drops. I put in on my 18 month old dog Troy. I went out for about an hour and when I got back home. I knew immediately that something was wrong with Troy. He was drooling excessively. When he tried to drink water, he would shake his head as though something in his mouth hurt.

I gave him a piece of ice, that he licked a few times. I checked his mouth to make sure that he was not cut or had something lodged in the back of his mouth or tooth.

I decided that the flea treatment was too much and gave him a bath immediately and applied soap and lots of water to remove as much of the pesitcide off of him.

As soon as I finished, there was an immediate difference. After about an hour or so, he stopped drooling and is doing so much better.

I’ve always been hesitate with Hartz, especially when I almost killed my cat using these products. I didn’t know that Hartz & Sergeants are the same.

Earlier today I posted a question on a Pet’s Forum and I found out that Hartz flea products may be the cause of my cat’s seizures. I began looking online and this site is what I found. But, here was the question I asked on the other site.

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I’m trying to find out what is causing my cat’s seizures. I’ve read up on cat seizures online. I don’t think it’s regular cat seizures. I think it’s something he’s allergic to. I took him to the vet and she did all the blood work, she can’t find anything wrong.

We’ve come to the conclusion that he didn’t strart having them until I started using a store bought liquid flea control, the kind you put on the back of their neck…Hartz brand I think.

I noticed he was only having them about once a month. He’s an indoor cat. When I went to put his flea medicine on him last month I began thinking maybe that is what was causing the seizures, so I didn’t put the med. on him…and as far as I know he hasn’t had another one…

I bought the Sargeants flea drops in a pinch as my vet was closed and we couldn’t get our usual Frontline. I should have listened to my intuition which told me to wait the day and get the Frontline medication, because now my kitty is on his death bed. Immediately after applying the drops I noticed his eyes glaze over, and appear “weepy.” He vomitted excessively, wet himself and was unable to clean the feces from his bum, resulting in poop being smeared everywhere. He lost weight almost immediately as well. His eyes shook, and he was almost unable to stand. I rushed him to the vet who said he looked as thought he was having metabolic problems. He was severely dehydrated, and we will not know for a few days when the tests come back if he has permanent damage to his liver and kidneys (which will result in having him put down) or if he will recover. I can tell anyone reading this that he does not look as thoguh he will rebound from this. He was a perfectly healthy blue-point siamese cat with a happy indoor life. I have spent many hours holding him, comforting his sad, sick cries of pain, and cleaning up his messes; not to mention the money that I do not have spent on vet bills which could have been avoided. I feel taken advantage of by this company who puts their flea medication on the shelves under the premise that it is comparable to products like Frontline, and safe for animals. Why would anyone question the safety of these products which have been around for decades? I wish I had the means to sue this company, not for monetary compensation, but rather to increase public awareness baout this travesty and stop the sale and distribution of these toxic products. I cannot articulate how pissed, angered, saddened, and overall irate I am about this situation and the countless others like this one. I encourage anyone who has read this to boycott these products, and urge your major grocery retailers,and pet retailers liek Petco, and Petsmart to remove these items from the shelves. to all of you who have lost a pet, or endured this troubled time with your loved animal, my heart goes out to you. My vet told me we could have achieved the same reaction in our animals if we had let them drink anti-freeze. THESE PRODUCTSARE TOXIC POISONS, UNREGULATED BY THE FDA, EPA AND ANY OTHER SAFETY AGENCY! THIS HAS TO STOP!!!
Thank You,
Keri

about two days ago I perchased sargeant’s flea drops for my cat casburry and put them on him, he was fine all night when I put them on him and then when I woke up the next morning I noticed him to be very sick, his eyes were widened with dialated pupils and he just layed there foaming every where from his mouth. So I called to him to see if he would come to me, he tried to but it was as if he was paralized, he took one step and fell over. So I rushed him into the bathroom and washed off as much of the flea drops as I could. After that I thought he had gotten better because he started to walk a little. So I thought it would get better from then on. But it didn’t, he started foaming again and had no balence, he was crashing into walls and when he tried to jump up on my bed he just crashed into the side of it. It was awful. Then it got even worse, he just laid down on the floor, wouldn’t move and just peed all aver himself and the floor, thats when I said this can’t wait I have to call a vet. So I called the vet and he said to bring him in right away. When we got there he gave him a shot to stop the foaming and absorb some of the toxins in his blood. There wasn’t much else he said we could do, he sent me home with some of the medication and told me to give him some mineral oil as that would help get rid of any toxins in his gut area. He said that I’ll just have to wait and see because he see’s this quite often and some live and some don’t. Currently he seems better, and it has been about two days now, he is up and about a little and has started to purr again, but still foams every where so he is still on the medication which stops his foaming for up to six hours. He just kinda goes up hill then down hill then up again, so I am not sure what his out come will be at this point, but I am hopeing and praying for the best. I just couldn’t imagine loosing my baby because these company’s have to be so careless and money hungry. I would much love to see these nasty pet posioning products of store shelve’s.

I bought this same product for my cat, not knowing how dangerous it is. 3 days after putting the drops on my cat, he started vomit several times a day and quickly began losing weight. I spent about 300 dollars worth of vet bills in a month to get him better. Whats worse is the stuff is a 3 month dose. In one shot! I’m coming up on the end of the 3 months and have Advantage to put on him that I got from my vet. I feel so horrible for what I put him through. There were days where I didn’t think he was going to make it. He was lethargic, weak and barely ate. Some days he couldn’t even use his litter box. I’ve learned a very important lesson and will NEVER buy this cheap flea stuff. My poor guy is so thin, its almost scary.

I wish I’d read these comments last week. Normally I purchase Frontline or Advantage from my Veterinarian, but just shelled out over $1600 to get my transmission fixed.
I wasn’t just trying to save money, but find SOMETHING I could purchase. The unusual heat and humidity has the fleas cropping up early here.

I absolutely didn’t have enough money for anything my Vet had so I went to Dollar General and got the Sargeants Silver topical and spray for my two cats.

I have to use spray for my Persian because her coat is too dense to get to the skin well.

I used the topical on my other cat. Neither showed a reaction that evening and it never occurred to me anything was going to go wrong. Neither threw up or anything. Unfortunately I was away during the next day and when I got home the Persian was in shock. I tried gently rinsing her coat, not wanting to shock her further but it was too late. My 14 year old friend died.

My other cat that received the topical is much younger and is hanging in there. But she isn’t eating at all. I hope to God she hasn’t suffered liver toxicity.

I’m taking the products I have left back and going to ask for a refund, and I wonder how they’ll react. But the store people have to be made aware of what’s happening.

@Ashley – Its not 3 months in a tube it is 3 tubes 1 month each. If you put on all of the tubes you killed your cat.

@Sue – Not sure if it is the same but the only sergeants drops I have seen at a Dollar General are dog drops! Which are lethal to cats. If you used the dog drops on your cats you pretty much executed the Persian 1942 Nazi style.

Does anyone even check the validity of these posts? They all seem like they are written by illiterate people who are trying to get a bunch of money cause fluffy died. Also I would put money on mostly half of these people used dog flea drops which are made with chemicals that will kill almost any cat.

Now I will agree the companies mentioned sell horrible trash products. But I would also bet my pets life that 75% of these stories are completely fake or user error killed the poor animal. Which makes it unfortunate that laws don’t require People to be smart and follow directions before getting pets.

Maybe people should start taking responsibility for their actions. Like the last person will spend 1600 bucks on getting her car fixed. (which is completely overpriced in my opinion) and spend 2 dollars on her cats meds and watch them die! If you can spend almost 2000 dollars on a transmission I am sure you can beg borrow or deal for an extra 40 for safe working drops. Thats why they made pawn shops craigslist and ebay. So you can get some extra cash when you need it. Put the cat that lived up for adoption cause you obviously have your priorities in the wrong order. I would rather walk, carpool take a cab or a bus to work and anywhere else than to give my animals cheap generic crap. Rule of thumb—If you cant afford medicine that costs more than a bagel and a cup of coffee you probably shouldn’t own animals. I am quite curious what kind of scarey food you guys are also feeding your beloved animals when the most you will shell out for meds is a few bucks. You just purchased and applied already deadly chemicals to your loving animal that you paid less for than a gallon of gas it took for you to go and get! Could have saved yourself a trip and just held your animals underwater when you were trying to wash this nuclear material off of it.

Feel free to leave your information here and I will make sure to contact animal protection to investigate these possible kitty murders you have committed!

Thanks everyone for reading and please stay away from my animals.

P.S you may now consider yourself the Hitler of the domestic animals. GRATS!

First off @ Steve,It is sad you are cocky enough to bash everyone and tell them to leave their info, but are to cowardly to leave your own to back up your words.

You have what is commonly referred to as a battleship mouth with a rowboat ass, which means you would never say these things to a persons face out of fear or retaliation. You are no more than a pathetic cyberbully and that is all you will ever amount to, I bet your folks are so ashamed.

Second we bought the Hartz Gold specifically for cats before we knew about this epidemic, and one of our cats got extremely sick and lethargic and was twitching along his back where we put the drops, and the other had seizures so severe that the vet had to put him down.

It was not until a few days after that the vet told us the cause, and that he had found many cases like ours. It has been over 2 months and we now refuse to use any of the flea products on the cat directly, I now bathe him once a week with regular cat shampoo and manually pick the fleas off, and clean the carpets bi-weekly with a pet-safe carpet shampoo.

I have no want of money, it will not bring our little one back, I would just like to see Hartz/Seargents halt production of their flea and tick treatment line permanently.

and P.S. to Steve if you really want to mince words face to face my e-mail is [email protected], I will gladly send you a time and place.

Wow, thats some pretty heavy shit Steve just put out there.However I kinda have to agree with some of what he said. I own 2 beautiful cats, they are my girls.House cats both, but somehow i got FLEAS!!!! My 5yr old long hair Calico Samantha turns out is allergic to the bites and now has lost most of her hair from the waist down 🙁 last yr when this problem started i went to my vet and got the proper drops for both my cats.Sams fur came back over the winter and she was my beauty again…until the beginning of July this year. Her fur started to rapidly fall out again. So i opted for the cheap stuff from my local pet store. I now have put it all together and see ive made a huge mistake!
Looking back Sam was very lethargic for about a week, sleeping a lot, loss of appetite. I never thought it was the flea drops i purchased.
I am so grateful i didn’t kill my cat, because i wanted to save a few bucks!
Never will i make that mistake again. Im sucking it up and getting my place professionally sprayed for fleas and my girls are starting on their proper flea meds, from my vet. Sam is currently on steroids to alleviate the itching.
Let this be a lesson learned. We love our animals,they are our babies, treat them that way. When they need meds they go to the vet. When they are sick, they go to the vet, and so on. They are family…:)

i have used Hartz products on my cats and had no problems. i use the product as directed. it must be used in accordance to the animals weight and not to be used with any other type of flea control product…i.e; flea collars-flea powders or sprays or even carpet treatments…it says this right on the packaging. also when applying to cats it must be put high enough up on the backs of thier necks that they cant turn and lick the area the meds are applied to. there is always a chance in using anything toxic. sorry any pets die for any reason other than having lived a long full happy life with their human.

Yesterday my sisters nanny used it on my kitten and an hour later my Spartacus died at the vet. I almost lost him when he was just a week old because of his mother not producing milk, I bottle fed him and his sister. This has got to stop, a product that is suppose to help your animals but instead it kills them and doesn’t even kill the fleas

We bought the Silver sargeant’s flea control at our
local Dollar General. Our daughter’s cat died just
yesterday of acute kidney failure-sudden death
because of this poison. This was a double blow
to us as our daughter passed away earlier this year.
The only way to get these companies to stop placing
bad or inferior products on shelves is through civil
suits that hurt them financially. Please let us know
should a class action begin..

Please do not use toxins on any animal. Buy food grade diatamacious earth. Any health food store or pet store will carry it. It kills fleas. It is natural. People can even eat it. NO CHEMICALS on animals please. very sorry for all your losses. I have 7 cats, they are all over 12 years old. I just lost one to cancer. I know the grief and anger that comes with that.

I purchased Hart for cats flea mercha medicine at dollar general last night. I applied it to my cat of 6 years old and she started drooling then walking funny & freaking out. She Then started convulsing & this kept on all through the evening. I bathed her and kept her warm until she dried but , it was too late it was already in her blood stream & her brain. She Couldn’t move & I contacted an emergency vet as it was the weekend. I brought her in that morning & there was no saving her. I Don’t know how this product is deemed safe for animals ! ! It killed my healthy six-year-old calico cat and I am devastated today. Please alert others tonight by the Dollar General store flea medicine for cats or dogs it is deadly